I ran today just to do my usually journeying of shopping around South Bend/Mishawaka, I go here shop, go there shop, go eat, then I go hit the University Park Mall, check out a few shops, I start to turn off down the main walk hall and DING DING DING CHUG CHUG CHUG WHOO WHOOO OMG this train on rubber wheels is coming right at me! wazzup with this? I’m staring at this thing in disbelief. It has this fakerized mockup trying to look like a steam engine with tender and a few cars you and toddlers can ride for 3 bucks all over the mall. I went on some shopping then found its stopping point and looked at it more closely. It has this piping device on top of the boiler that looks like a scrapped off water meter. The fake wheels turned with a main drive rod moving on a piston support but no piston rod. The engineer steers it around and rings a bell, the sounds are all fakered train sounds or taken from some recording and as its driven the train sounds run CHUG CHUG TOOOOT TOOOOOT. With the push for high speed rail I wonder if the marketeers are cashing in and doing things like this and maybe making the public more aware of trains doing such a thing, actually a pretty smart trick. But I recall years ago as a kid in Ft Wayne, indiana the old Wolf and Dessaurs store had a live steam santa train you could ride…inside!! on REAL RAILS!! well, not sure if it was live steam but definately a real miniature steamer.
Dinwitty:
At least it’s a ‘start’, LOL! I remember the good old days when department stores set up their Christmas train displays in about October, so that we kids could get a really GOOD look at the goodies that would hopefully be around our Tree by Dec. 25th.
Back then, my family made an annual pilgrimage from my home town to Sacramento to see the goodies at Weinstocks, Hales, Western Auto, Sears, Montgomery Ward and several other stores chock full of Lionel, American Flyer and Marx display layouts. And there would be a ‘Santa’ special in at least one of the stores (on real rails) so that we kids could get in and ride around behind a ‘real’ locomotive while our parents hopefully decided how good we’d been and what they could afford for us, train-wise.
One thing, with a kid’s imagination, the train doesn’t HAVE to look like what an adult thinks it ought to. If they can get in and ride on it, they’ll create the rest of the ‘realism’ in their minds, bless them.
Frankly, I think it’s neat for the shopping mall to do that. It would be nice if other shopping malls take the hint. Kids + train = fun. And some breathing space for the parents, LOL!
Tom [:D]